zigbee – Terence Eden’s Blog

Adventures with ultra-cheap ZigBee lightbulbs

Terence Eden — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 11:34:16 +0000

The people who built my kitchen were idiots. They designed it to be lit with a dozen recessed GU10 spotlights. That's not so terrible - GU10 LED bulbs are only about £1 each - but because I am a bigger idiot, I decided I wanted remote-controlled bulbs.

And ZigBee bulbs are expensive!

Five years ago, feeling flush with cash, I replaced all the bulbs with a mixture of Hue and Innr Smart bulbs. Last week, two of the bulbs died. No explosions or release of magic smoke - they just became unresponsive and I lack the skills to fix complex electronics.

So I looked at some replacements. Hue bulbs are £31 per pair - that's about 15x more expensive than buying a regular bulb. The cheaper Innr bulbs are about a tenner each. Still a bit much.

What about non-branded ZigBee lights? On eBay I found a single GU10 for £8 and, if I was prepared to buy in bulk, £60 for 10.

That's getting better - but still a premium on a boring non-smart bulb.

So I went looking for a Shenzhen special on AliExpress - and hit the jackpot!

There, I found a ZigBee GU10 bulb for £4! The price seems to fluctuate between £3 and £5 - but there are plenty of sellers with close-to-identical products priced less than a fiver.

The bulb took a few days to arrive from China. I plugged it in, searched for it in the Hue app, and it was added. Less than a minute later I was able to bark "Alexa! Turn on the kitchen lights!" - it responded at the same time as all its brethren. It is also colour changeable - unlike the Hue and Innr models.

The labelling says it is by eWeLink and, as expected, it has warm white and colour changing LEDs. Total power of 5 Watts.

But that's not all! AliExpress will quite often plunge price certain items to entice you to become a customer. I picked up another bulb for 77p! It was limited to one per customer - but that was good enough for me!

My sub-quid bulb arrived and… Yeah, identical to the first. Plugged in, paired quickly, turned into a disco bulb with a couple of taps. Oh, and because shipping on the 2nd bulb was delayed, I got a £1 voucher. So, I guess, technically it was free? So I bought another.

Here's what they look like in situ:

They do a range of RGB colours - and will also do white at a variety of shades. They dim. They react quickly. They're cheap.

Will these bulbs last as long as the others? Considering the price, I'm not sure I care! If you buy from a UK store on eBay, there's probably slightly more chance of recompense if things do go wrong. But if you're happy to wait for delivery from China - those cheap AliExpress bulbs are probably fine.

So, there you go. For a couple of quid, you can get a generic colour-changing ZigBee light which is compatible with Philips Hue.

FAQ

juST use A ligHTswiTch

Our kitchen is big. The lightswitches are far away. Also, I don't want them covered with cake-batter when I'm cooking.

gEt a sMarT LIGhtSWItCh

Most UK homes don't have a neutral wire to the switch. That makes it hard to use smart-switches. The ones which work without neutral don't work with dimmable bulbs.

WhAt AbOuT ThE carbon FOotprINt Of shipping?

Even a regular bulb would have been shipped from far away.

PRIVaCY AnD secuRItY is iMpORtAnt

Yes it is. ZigBee bulbs don't have a way to "phone home" and are relatively resistant to being hacked.

Hacking your Smart Meter - Part 1 - Zigbee

Terence Eden — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 11:55:54 +0000

I have a new Smart Meter to measure my electricity and gas usage. It's the Honeywell AS302P.

It's a SMETS2 meter, which means it has a number of interesting features.

ALCS (Auxiliary Load Control Switch) - this means that a car charger can be remotely started and stopped based on network demand.
DCC connection - this means it can report back to my energy supplier every 30 minutes, and I can swap between providers quickly.
High resolution usage - this means I can be charged on multiple time of day tariffs.

But, most importantly to me, it is Zigbee certified.

The meter offers ZigBee Communications for tunnelling information to the Comms Hub and to provide Customer Information for use with Type 1 or Type 2 Devices.

This means it can connect to a HAN (Home Area Network) using the ZigBee Smart Energy Profile (SEP) Version 1.2. This is the thing which sends data to your in-home display hub.

So, can we connect anything to the Smart Meter?

Our first stop is the Honeywell AS302P Manual. The UI of the meter is dreadful. There are two buttons:

A - the select button
B - the scroll down button

In order to go "back" in the menu, you need to scroll down to the menu item which says back and then hit A.

There's lots of info in there. I've redacted the PAN, XPAN, Network Info, and EUID for privacy:

But here's the interesting one - the ability to leave the existing network! I'm not yet brave enough to press it. First, I need to buy a Zigbee receiver and learn how the software works. Wish me luck!

Mixing Hue and Innr Smart Lights

Terence Eden — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 12:17:55 +0000

I really wanted to write a rant about how incompatible smart lights are ruining the world. But... errr... Everything just works.

Previously on my smarthome adventures, I kitted my house out with LIFX Bulbs and some WisQo Switches. I've moved home and none of my bulbs are compatible with the existing sockets!

What else am I going to do except BUY MORE LIGHTBULBS!

As much as I enjoy LIFX, they're bloody expensive. A single GU10 bulb is FIFTY QUID! Our new kitchen has 17 bulbs. Even if bought in bulk, that would cost me £765. Forget that noise!

So, I've gone with the Philips Hue system. The hub was just under £50 on Amazon. The bulbs use Zigbee rather than WiFi - which makes them cheaper and more energy efficient.

But Hue's GU10 bulbs cost about £20 each - that's still quite expensive.

Luckily, Zigbee is an open protocol, and there are loads of manufacturers of compatible bulbs. I found a fourpack of Zigbee GU10 for £40 - a tenner per bulb. A fifth of the price of LIFX. Would they work together? Yup. I don't have anything to rant about. I configured the hub, installed the app, plugged in the bulbs, and - boom! - they were instantly discovered and started working.

There are three very minor niggles.

Amazon Alexa went absolutely bananas. Discovering all those bulbs at once prompted her to keep saying "I have discovered a new light bulb. You can use it by saying..." Imagine that close to 20 times.
The Innr bulbs don't support firmware updates unless you have the Innr hub. That's probably not a huge problem. Their website says: "so far it has never been necessary to do a firmware update. All Innr lamps have the latest firmware approved and certified by Zigbee Alliance." I guess I'll buy and return a hub if necessary.
The dimming curve is slightly uneven. Using the Hue app's manual control, I can fade the lights out gently. When I turn them off, they dim quickly to about 25% brightness and then shut off. Bit weird, but not a dealbreaker.

If you can recommend a cheap supplier of Zigbee lights - or any other Zigbee gadgets - please let me know.